Haibara's Old Friend
by pimmypimpim
Summary: Ch2: The mysterious girl brings grave news of grand proportions to Conan and Haibara. How will the two of them respond?
1. Sherry's childhood

DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN DETECTIVE CONAN!  
  


Chapter One: Sherry's childhood 

panting sound

'Number 10th Beika…'

Panting sound

'… just hold on, I'm almost there…'

'12th, 14th, 16th, 18th, 20th….' 

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Meanwhile, approaching from the other side of the street, two kids barely 1st grade, a boy and a girl walked back from school together, casually arguing about matters that sounded too big for their sizes.

'Jeez Kudo, you just don't accept others' opinion at all do you'

'There's only one truth, no alternatives'

'You know it doesn't work that way all the time'

'Ha! That is such nonsense'

'Oh gosh! Maybe I should just give up on you, you are so hopeless'

Conan opened his mouth; about to argue back when he spotted a girl, looking visibly exhausted standing a few feet away from them. Something about this girl caught his attention. She seemed to be around their age but unlike the other six year-old kids she has 'their' kind of eyes. The eyes that screamed out 'I don't belong here'. The girl was a complete mess. When Haibara noticed that Conan was ignoring her, she followed his eyes. 

The mysterious girl suddenly looked up, and caught sight of Haibara. With traces of joy in her croaky voice she cried out;

'Sherry! … Ain't I glad to see you' the girl hardly finished her sentence when she collapsed to the ground.

'Cider' muttered Haibara. Surprised, but immediately coming to the conclusion that they knew each other, Conan glanced at the girl standing next to him, and for the second time in his life, he saw her tears.

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_Ten years ago…._

A red haired Japanese girl who seemed too mature for her age of seven walked around in a building that seems to be a dormitory. On her left hand, she was carrying a small handbag with hardly anything in it, while her right hand clinged on to a piece of paper.

'Room number 471' she quietly read from the piece of paper, confirming the room number to herself.

'Must be this way' she muttered to herself and turned right, taking another ten steps before stopping in front of a black painted door with the shiny metal numbers '471' on it. Pulling out an envelope from her bag, the girl took out a keycard and swiped it on the card-reader next to the door.

click

Having unlocked the door, she gently opened it to find her first surprise. 

A brown haired girl of around the same height jumped out of the room, intending to hug the Japanese girl but accidentally knocked both herself and the newcomer to the floor. 

Instead of apologizing, the assailant, who seemed overwhelmed with joy, laughed cheerfully before starting her verbal attack.

'Oh my gosh you must be my new roommate I'm so excited they told me my roommate is Japanese I love Japan I'd love to go there one day your name is Sherry right? Mine's Cider it's so awesome to meet you finally you know we'll be rooming together for a year' the girl said that really fast in one breath, her voice was full of excitement.

'Oh wow, how wonderful.' The girl underneath breathed coldly, her voice dripping with sarcasm. 'Now that we're introduced, can you get off me?' 

As Sherry started to push Cider off of her, she took a glance at her assailant, examining this cheerful, brown haired girl with large brown eyes, tanned skin and sharp figure. This girl seemed to be quite cute. 'Latin of some sort' Sherry told herself, then took no more interest of the girl.

'Which one is my bed?' She said to the air.

'Oh c'mon, is this how you greet someone who's going to be your best friend? Don't they teach you any manners in Japan?' Cider asked disappointedly, having started to fume up after finding out how her new roommate is like.

'Best Friend?, You want to be my best friend? Look. I'm going to do you a favour by pointing out that I want NO friends, I need NO friends and I will therefore be having NO friends, let alone a best friend, get it?!!' she shrieked.

'Problem child, huh?' Cider raised her left eyebrow and continued.

'Let see… what could it be… forced to come here? Maybe not, seemed too determined. Love life? Nah... probably still too young …. now I got it! Sudden death of parents, am I right?'

That seemed to strike Sherry really hard. Her eyes shining with madness, she suddenly turned around, grabbed Cider's neck and squeezed with all her might, furiously trying to strangle her, ignoring all thoughts of possible consequences. 

'Making friends?' A new, harsh voice interrupted. 

Sherry let go of Cider's neck out of surprise, and quickly turned around to the owner of the voice. Cider gasped for air, gagging loudly.

A tall, strict looking old lady dressed in complete black stepped into the room, her cold eyes staring down at Cider, who was still lying on the floor, then swiftly shifted her gaze onto Sherry.

'What is going on?' The old lady demanded, her voice betraying no emotions but was backed up by years and years of experience. There was no doubt that she would ger her answers.

'I- I just…' Sherry's voice shook as she felt the woman's cold eyes slowly glide down her shaking figure, and as slowly come back up to stare deep into her shifting eyes. 

The thought that she would now get out of this struck her, and she could not quench it.

'We're just, er…. sharing our martial-arts skills, ma'am. Sherry was showing me this really cool move.' Cider interrupted, after finally having straightened herself up.

The lady stared at them both in apparent disbelief, but decided to ignore the situation.

'Very well then. I am in charge of all new students. I want you all to be at the assembly hall in your uniform at 6 o'clock sharp. Understood?'

The woman didn't wait for an answer as she walked out and firmly shut the door.

The girls shared one deep glance at each other. Then they both started to smile.

**********

AN : Since I'm always been a huge Conan fan, I spend a lot of time daydreaming about being in the story myself. Cider 'was' suppose to be me… well.. kinda… then half way through the first chapter I decided to change around Cider a bit coz… I just don't see how 'I' can be intelligent enough to be in that black organization…. Then I made Cider an attractive Hispanic girl instead of a funny looking Asian girl T.T…. just to make it interesting.

This is my first time writing a story so… comments are very welcome.. Hope you guys enjoy it. The following chapters might take some times to come coz… I haven't thought of the ending yet .…

Lots of thanks to DeadMeat, a fellow fanfiction author, for editing the whole thing for me… sorry for my lousy English and also thank you for introducing FFN to me.. It's such an awesome site J.


	2. The Horror of 'PPP'

DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN DETECTIVE CONAN!  
  


Chapter Two: The horror of PPP 

'Another traitor from your black organization, I assume.' Conan asked, clearly not looking for an answer for he had already deducted everything.

Haibara stayed silent for a while, glaring down at the brown haired girl who lay comfortably tucked in a warm bed in Doctor Akasa's spare bedroom. After a while, Conan decided that it was time to continue with his questions.

'Who is she really? How does she know how you look like when you were a little kid?'

'She was my first roommate from SFI'

'SFI?' Conan asked, while trying to figure out what the abbreviation stood for.

'School For Intelligence at Hidden Valley in the US. It's where I was raised'

It was the first time Haibara mentioned her past, Conan duly noted.

'A scientist as well?'

'No, she specialized in Computer Technology, which is basically everything computer related from hardware, software, networking and even hacking into systems. She was the best'

'Then what is she doing here?' Conan demanded, his voice having turned serious with a note of panic. 'How did she find us? You didn't call her here did you?' 

'Why does everyone always pick on Sherry?' a voice originating from the bed wondered. The girl who said that slowly pushed herself up to look at the rest of the people in the room, her eyes fully awoken and shining from the intelligence hidden underneath the childish body.

'Don't worry.' The girl continued. 'Sherry had nothing to do with it; I quit, so I came here to look for help.'

Conan and Haibara quickly locked gazes, both looking terrified as they wondered if they had made any mistakes that would lead the black organization directly to them.

'I heard Sherry tell you that I am a hacker, so yeah, that's my job. And as she also told you, I was the best of them. Virtually no information is safe from me, which means that I had access to every fishy little report the black organization encrypted and hid in their servers.'

Figuring that she was about to tell them a long story, Cider turned her back against the wall, still facing her audience, and pulled the sheets around her, covering herself up to her neck while snuggling comfortably underneath.

One of the many reports I read while I was working was about a young detective that took APTX 4869 and the resulting search at his place after the incident. It wouldn't strike anyone but me as strange, because of the fact that my old best friend made some changes to it two days after it was submitted. Sherry always has her reason for doing things like that, and I'm sure it wasn't just a typo problem. That was my first clue.'

The other two froze. _They_ know now.

'Thanks to me, being one of the five top computer administrator of the organization, I covered that up for her. Her sister's death and her disappearance were my second and third clue that something was up. And finally, the fourth clue that confirmed your position, was an attempt to look up information from the organization's disk not long after that, right from this place. It messed up your computer didn't it?' The girl smirked.

'But the computer wasn't even connected to the internet or anything, it was working offline' Conan argued, once again thinking that Haibara might have betrayed him by contacting the organization that sent this girl.

'That's my masterpiece.' the girl answered with a satisfied grin.

'I forgot to tell you that my hobby is computer virus development. While messing up your computer the virus logged onto the network and notified me that there's an attempt to open the disk from outside. Luckily, people don't usually pull out their phone cords when they go offline, and that was your mistake.'

As realization of how it all had happened dawned on Conan and Haibara, Cider simply smiled and confirmed their suspicions. 

'Doesn't that sound sooooo simple? It only took two seconds to let me know, most of the time it works'

'So you figured out where we were hiding through that method.' Haibara concluded.

'It was quite a gamble, but pretty much yes'

'So it hasn't slipped out to them that we are here?'

'Since when did I stop covering up for you, Sherry?'

Conan and Haibara exchanged a look. Having known Conan for a long time, Haibara easily read Conan's questioning expression, the one that asked her if Cider could be trusted. Haibara gave a small nod of confirmation.

'It sounds like you had a great job, and knew everything the black organization would kill to know … so then why did you quit, Cider?' Haibara asked.

'Because they are killing _him_' Cider whispered, sinking her head into the sheets.

Haibara merely nodded, knowing perfectly well whom Cider was referring to.

'They have festered his mind. And I want him back. I want us both out of this … this madness!' Cider cried out, her voice slightly muffled by the sheets but still resonating with the emotional scar deep inside her.

Both Conan and Haibara were puzzled about what Cider was referring to, but kept their silence while waiting for the answer to their unspoken question.

'Do you know anything about partitioning a computer hard drive?' Cider asked, having lifted her head slightly above the sheets, but still avoiding Conan's and Haibara's gaze. 'It's a really simple thing every person who has formatted a PC should know and be able to do.'

'By partitioning a hard drive it basically means that you're splitting the space on the computer into different parts, so that the information can be stored in an organized way, and it will also protect the information in case one part goes down.' Pausing, Cider sighed and took a short breather before going on with the explanation.

'Have you also heard of the Split Personality Disorder?' Sensing, rather than seeing their confirming nods, the girl continued. 'The term is quite self-explanatory. Basically, you have two personalities, kind of like two completely different people inside your head, at the same time, although only one is active at one time. But the thing is, you won't notice or remember anything about the other personality, and what they've done while they've been asleep. 'Knowing that, can you now see how these two things can be related?' Cider asked them. When the others didn't respond, she finally got to her point.

'I was part of PPP, the 'Partitioning Personalities Program' research team. Our goal is to split people's memory, a part of the brain into two parts completely isolated from one another, thus creating a perfect spy that would be able to be proved innocent when captured since he wouldn't have a clue what the other personality of his has done. That would both protect his life and all the information gathered from the mission.' As she said this, her voice started shaking, quivering out of grief for the facts that she was about to reveal.

'I wouldn't have done it … I never would … If I knew only that they were going to experiment it on _him_! But after I had become involved in it, after I had reached the point where I couldn't back out of PPP, they chose to use Tonic, for they knew that I wouldn't fail if I was responsible for him. So I had no choice.'

'They split him into two men. One is called Jake, while the other one is Daryl. Jake is like how Tonic really were. He is very intelligent, charming and caring, while….' Pausing, Cider tried to blink off her tears that streamed down her face.

'Daryl is a merciless killing machine, an ideal spy.'

******

A/N:

It was really awesome getting reviews from readers :). I was soooooo excited. Thanks a million!

The story's getting more complicated in this chapter. DeadMeat asked me where I got the idea from. To tell you the truth I don't know. Everything just clicked while I was playing tennis. There was a lot more than this but I kinda forgot coz I didn't have anything to write on. :'( 

Thanks again to DeadMeat for your brilliant job of editing this mess for me. Is it just me or you edit pretty much half of the chapter??

[Editors notes: No, it's Me :P]


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